I saw that. I think that’s exactly the key bit to track tbh. Vox populi guy — explainer, polarization, media critique — bellwethering the mainstream. 🤷🏻♀️
Conversation
There’s a whole field of anti-explainer study in my corner of the blogosphere 🤣
I don’t unreservedly dislike them since there is a minority of good ones, but overall it’s a grifty part of blogo-newslettero-podcasto-sphere just a notch above Taboola-grade click farming
2
4
I am somewhat sympathetic to both POVs here since I started to straddle both spaces (so you can argue I have no cred to critique either!). I have definitely had editors in popular press edit out all references to theory, even accessible “pop theory”, in writing I submit.
6
It is completely different writing styles. But as for who gets to write the big piece in mainstream pubs, shaping the debate for the public…that does often go to pundits.
2
4
I assume whenever I write something that touches on an academic discipline I’m not part of, 20 very angry people will find me on twitter to tell me why I am completely wrong/outdated ab their field. :) It is a good opportunity to learn but, I get their frustration.
5
“Social media problems analysis” is possibly unique in how many different disciplines it touches?
4
It’s also home to the most hostile practitioner-theorist divide on normative questions after political science. Ezra Klein doing a media theory op-ed is like Putin doing an op-ed on governance. It’s not that he lacks expertise. It’s that he’s the natural object of theorizing.
1
2
I’d take him seriously if he adopted a meta-ironic posture like Ryan Holliday (“Trust me, I’m lying”) that deconstructs his own role in shaping the media landscape in the process of theorizing it.
1
3
I’ll tell you since you didn’t read it. Somewhere between 1985 and today, the landscape changed. It’s the medium, obv. S230? Nah. Regulatory structures, financial systems, anything external to essences and addictions? None of this is even entertained.
2
We know, to your point, he knows better than to naturalize the media ecology. He’s an agent who helped shape its form. 🤷🏻♀️
1
So not just laziness but demonstrable bad faith in the context of his own background. Which is… common in alumni of successful new media.
Upton Sinclair line applies. “it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I love that quote. When it wears a fleece, so sleeves, I call this the “vested interests.” 😂


